


i chased your love around a figure eight

by fortunehasgivenup



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cake, Consequences, Developing Relationship, F/M, Moving On, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22308478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunehasgivenup/pseuds/fortunehasgivenup
Summary: Beth doesn’t really get it, how it just keeps coming back to this. To them. When she says to Rio, “You must hate me,” all he does is shrug and reply, “I don’t.”
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Comments: 27
Kudos: 139





	i chased your love around a figure eight

Beth accepted the bag of washed cash with a smile. “Thank you, Kate. Same time, two weeks?”

Kate, a single mother of three with an absolute dirtbag of an ex, smiled back. “Yup! We’ll be heading to Oklahoma, so I’ll do some shopping there.”

“Sounds good,” Beth replied. “Have fun!”

Kate got in her car and drove off, leaving Beth to finish packing her groceries. She’d just put the cereal in when someone passed her the bag of produce.

“Thanks,” she said automatically, starting to put it down before realizing what had happened. Slowly, she straightened. In that time, Rio got tired of waiting for her to turn towards him and took a seat on her back bumper. “What are you doing here?”

Rio grinned at her. “Free country. I can be wherever I want, can’t I?”

Beth set the produce down. When she turned to take the cart back, she saw Demon leaning against it. Once their eyes locked, he nodded at her and dragged the cart away.

“Is this a threat?” Beth looked over at Rio, who was still amused.

He gave her a slow up and down, sucking his lower lip into his mouth. “Oh darling, if I was threatening you, you’d know it.”

“Then why are you here?” She crossed her arms over her chest, almost immediately regretting it. Now she looked defensive.

Rio jerked his head in the direction where Demon’d gone. “We got a hankering for pretzels. They’ve got a sale going on.”

Beth rolled her eyes. “Cut the bullshit.”

“Or what?” Rio asked, smile gone. “You’ll shoot me?”

Her shock at his brazen reference made him laugh hard enough that he threw his head back. “You should see your face,” he said. “What, did you think I’d forgotten about that? Did you think I wouldn’t notice this?” He reached into the trunk and lifted the flap of the bag Kate had just given her. “Don’t worry, Elizabeth, I flipped my game. Not in the funny money business anymore, remember?”

Which explained why she hadn’t seen him. She’d heard about him, of course. Not everyone comes back from the dead. Beth was almost certain that his reputation had grown in the days since she’d shot him.

“Congratulations,” she told him. “I wish you luck on your new business venture.”

“Really?” Rio leaned towards her. “Because when I was in the hospital, you didn’t send me a card or nothing.”

Beth turned her head away, burning with shame and anger that seemed to eat away at her every time she thought about this man.

“I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me,” she settled on saying.

This time, his laugh was soft. “Yeah, I probably wouldn’t have been too excited to see a Get Well Soon card from you. But a balloon would have been nice.”

Something in his tone made Beth look back at him. He’s teasing me, she realized, about the fact that I shot him.

“I’ll get right on that,” she snapped. “Actually, no I won’t. Helium isn’t a renewable resource. We need to stop using it for shit like balloons.”

Rio nodded, expression grave. “I guess I could settle for an edible arrangement or something.”

“And where would I send it?” Beth stepped closer to Rio. “I don’t know where you live.”

“I still own the loft,” he said, his lids lowering slightly as he tilted his head back to keep his eyes on her. “You can send it there. I’ll get it.”

Beth scoffed. “Really?”

“Yeah, market’s not too good for selling right now,” Rio remained conversational, “though it’s a buyer’s paradise right now. How’s your mortgage coming along?”

“Fine.”

“That right?” Rio’s jaw twitched, almost like he was biting back a laugh. “Well that’s good to hear, Elizabeth.”

Demon returned from putting away her cart, taking Rio’s back.

“Drive safe,” Rio told her. “You never know who’s out there.” Then he walked away, getting into an unfamiliar black car.

It took Beth five minute to stop trembling. And in that time, her mind didn’t stop racing through every possible connotation of his words.

_You never know who’s out there._

He had said she’d know if he was threatening her, but had that been a threat?

No, some tiny rational part of her head fought back her panic. He’s said things like this before, it reasoned, and you took it for a threat when it wasn’t - look where that’s gotten us.

But what else was there to do?

——————————

Beth climbed in through the window of the loft and looked around the empty space.

She’d expected it to look…different, for there to be some sign of what had happened there, but someone had cleaned it. When she walked to the spot where Rio had fallen to the ground, there was not a single sign that he nearly bled out there, but she could remember what he’d looked like, what he’d sounded like.

She shut her eyes against the image and took a shaky breath. _It’s over. He’s alive. I’m alive._ She repeated the refrain until she was finally able to open her eyes again. She made an effort not to look at that patch of hardwood as she moved to set the box on the kitchen counter.

The phone ringing wasn’t a surprise, neither was the fact that it was from a private number.

“What are you doing right now?” Rio asked when she picked up.

Getting a haircut, she almost said.

“We both know that you’re watching me right now,” Beth told him instead. “Don’t you want to know what’s in the box?”

He made a noise. “Too small for a head. Not too worried.”

“Could be a hand,” she said, leaning against the counter. “A foot.”

“If it is, I’ll be suitably impressed, sweetheart.”

Beth looked up to where the camera was. “I’m gonna go, but you shouldn’t leave this here too long, or it’ll go bad. Anything else?”

“I like your hair, Elizabeth.”

He hung up before she could process that statement, and it took a moment for Beth to be able to push herself up and climb out the window.

She drove to Ruby’s for their lunch date on autopilot.

“What’s on the back of your coat?” Ruby asked when Beth was removing her boots. Beth looked over her shoulder. There was a line of grime across her jacket, probably from ducking under the window.

“I broke into Rio’s loft.”

Ruby’s face went through a range of feelings as Beth watched - surprise, confusion, horror, surprise again, back to horror. “You did what now?”

Beth took off her jacket and hung it up. “He came to visit me the other day when I was doing the drop with Kate.” She joined Ruby in the kitchen. “We talked. He said something, so I did something.”

Ruby gripped Beth’s shoulder. “You did something?”

“I baked him a cake,” Beth replied. Ruby narrowed her eyes at her. “And wrote “I’m sorry that I shot you” on the top.”

“You have a death wish,” Ruby sighed, dropping her hand.

“If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead,” Beth said. “But I’m not.”

“Maybe he’s waiting until you’re all calm and complacent before striking.” Ruby uncovered the salad bowl. “That way you have more to lose.”

Beth looked at her. “Ruby, it’s fine.”

“Beth,” Ruby slapped her hands down on the table and leaned towards her, “you got him arrested and he shot your husband. What do you think he’s going to do to _you_ for shooting _him_? And us, for going along with the plan.”

It killed her a little that she couldn’t give Ruby any kind of guarantee, so she changed the topic as smoothly as she could. Ruby knew what she was doing, but didn’t seem too upset to go along with it. Lunch passed quickly.

—————————

“I like lemon cake better.”

Beth jumped and shrieked, nearly dropping the bag of apples she’d gone to pick up. She turned her head towards Rio, who was sitting on the counter next to the sink and eating a cookie. One of her cookies. The kettle was about to start whistling. “What the hell,” she gasped.

“Cake,” Rio said. “Your chocolate cake is damn good, but I like lemon cake better. For next time.”

Beth glared at him. “For next time? Next time I shoot you?”

“There’s all kinds of fuckups that don’t involve firearms,” he told her with a shrug. “Maybe you flake on me or put me in a situation where I gotta crack some heads. Lemon cake.”

“You’re insane,” Beth stomped to the kettle and took it off the heat, shutting it off. There were two mugs, each with a tea bag wrapped around the handle. “Really?”

“We have to talk.” She heard his feet thump lightly against the ground as he pushed off the counter. “Figured that we might as well be comfortable and I was hungry.”

Beth poured hot water into the mugs and carried both to the living room. She set them down on coasters and sat, leaning against the armrest. 

Rio followed, dropping onto the cushion right next to hers rather than sitting at the other end like a normal human being. But maybe that wasn’t an apt description of Rio.

“What do we need to talk about?” Beth asked, setting her hands in her lap in an attempt to stop herself from fidgeting. Or maybe to stop them from reaching out to check that he was real.

Rio’s arm came down onto the back of the couch. He didn’t make any kind of move to start talking. Beth clasped her hands together and she met his gaze.

He was still wearing all black, even his boots that he refused to take off inside her house. His scruff had thickened a little since she’d seen him last, but he still looked the same. Beth wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

“Why are you here?” she whispered.

He stayed silent for another moment before tilting his head to the side in consideration. “Is it everything you thought it would be?”

Beth flinched slightly. “No.”

“Not easy being king.” Rio made a fist of his hand and rested his cheek against it. “You sleeping?”

Beth shook her head.

“What do you see when you close your eyes at night?” he asked.

She turned away so that she could busy herself with her mug. It was still too hot, but it gave her something to do. Rio waited her out.

“I see you.” Beth wrapped both of her hands around the hot mug. “I see your face when I pulled the trigger. I see you lying on the ground.”

Rio hummed. “Yeah?”

“I remember what it sounded like when you were laughing.”

“You want forgiveness for that?”

Beth swallowed a few times.

“Because I ain’t about to give it,” Rio said.

“Didn’t expect you to,” Beth replied.

They lapsed into silence for a moment and when Rio started to talk again, it was about business.

————————

They were sitting on the hood of Rio’s car after a tense deal when Beth just started to sob.

“You must hate me,” Beth laughed, wiping away the tears spilling down her cheeks.

Rio’s hands were shoved in his pockets and his shoulders were tense. His head was turned away from her. Beth could see the muscles and tendons jumping beneath the expanse of skin at his throat. “I don’t.”

He spoke so quietly that she almost thought he hadn’t said anything.

“I don’t hate you,” he said it again, erasing any doubt that he’d spoken.

Beth stopped swiping at her cheeks. “Why not?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I should. When I woke up in the hospital, I did. Didn’t last though.” He dropped his head to look down at his feet. “But how am I supposed to hate you for doing what I taught you?” He laughed, though it wasn’t a pleasant sound.

“You want to be the king, you have to kill the king,” he said.

“This stuff’s medieval,” Beth finished for him. He nodded, still not lifting his head.

“Maybe you learned something,” Rio shifted. “Maybe I got through to you.”

“And that’s a good thing?” Beth asked.

He didn’t answer for a moment, just staring out towards the warehouses all around them. “Means you’re growing. Changing. Might be good, might be bad. You don’t know ’til it’s over.”

Rio stood. “And it ain’t over yet, Elizabeth.”

He drove her home in silence, but his car didn’t pull away until she was safely inside.

————————

Beth manoeuvred the scoop carefully so that she didn’t get batter all over the place as she filled the cupcake liners. One and a half scoops per cup, twenty four cups. That’s what it should have been. Except she’s out of batter and she’s only got twenty two cupcakes.

“Damn,” she muttered after scraping the bowl as much as she could.

A quiet snort made her look up. Rio was sitting at her counter, watching her work.

“How long have you been there?” she demanded, moving to grab spoons so she could move some batter to the two still empty cups.

“You’d just started on the second tray,” he said. “You get really into this.”

Beth didn’t respond to that, taking small scoops from each cup.

“Special occasion?” Rio asked.

Beth eyed the two trays. “These look even to you?”

Rio got off his stool and came to stand next to her. Right away, he pointed to one of them. “That one’s got more.”

He was right. She adjusted. “Now?”

“Looks good.”

Beth opened the oven. “Annie’s having a thing for Sadie. I said I’d make cupcakes.”

“A thing?” Rio passed her the trays one at a time.

“Yeah, it’s not exactly his birthday, but we’re having a - a celebration.”

Rio’s brows furrowed. “I thought -“ he stopped, expression clearing. “Oh.”

Beth nodded, then started to gather together all of the dirty dishes to put in the sink.

“Lemon,” he said, taking a pointed sniff.

“It’s his favourite too.” Beth turned on the hot water and added soap, swirling it around together until suds appeared.

Rio started to ferry the other utensils to the sink. “Gonna have any extras? I did quality control, after all.”

Beth gave him a look, but her disapproval bounced right off of him.

“Maybe there will be one.”

“There better be,” Rio warned her, “after all the help I gave you.”

Beth laughed, meeting his smiling gaze. It felt good to joke with him.

The ease didn’t last, interrupted by the ring of Rio’s phone in his jacket pocket. He excused himself to the backyard and Beth busied herself with the dishes.

She pointedly didn’t look out the window to watch him, so she didn’t realize he was coming back inside until she heard his voice.

“Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“I have to go,” Rio said, ending the call.

Beth nodded. “Oh wait, the cupcake.”

He paused on his way to the door. “Save one for me?”

“Sure. You’ll pick it up?”

“Yeah.” He smiled over his shoulder, then left. How was it that after every encounter, Beth felt less sure of where they stood?

She shook aside the thought and turned on some music, oldies, to listen to while making the frosting. Sadie liked unfussy things, so it was a pale yellow that Beth piped neatly onto the top of each cupcake.

Twenty three cupcakes got packed up. The twenty fourth sat on the table.

Beth stared at it, wishing it was more somehow. On a whim, she pulled out one of the remaining lemons and sliced it up. It didn’t take much effort to candy a few of the slices and when they had cooled, she selected the prettiest one. Smoothing down the frosting with her small offset spatula, she placed the lemon slice flat on top of the cupcake.

She wrapped it up carefully, even using a sticker to close the top of the box.

_I’ll leave it on the counter_ , she texted Rio.

He didn’t answer, but the box disappeared at some point in the night. He never told her why he had come to the house.

————————————

This thing between them - whatever the hell it was - felt like a fragile wisp, something that would evaporate if she tried to grab it.

But he showed up at the house. He sent her addresses and times, took her to drops and exchanges.

How is it, Beth thought to herself, that we keep winding up in the same place? No matter what they did, they ended up toe to toe, hovering just inches away. She got him arrested, nearly killed him. He came closer every time.

She read something once, about love and hate being two sides of the same coin. It sat heavy in her throat that that might be them - violence and cruelty as the defining moments of their…whatever it was that they had.

Intense emotions had always defined the two of them. Half of their encounters had begun or ended with a gun in someone’s hand. Even when there was no gun, there was still something - a not so subtle hint of Rio’s power.

Watching him during a drop a few hours after seeing him getting ice cream with Marcus, Beth realized that he could draw it in when he liked. With his son, it was almost invisible, though Beth was sure that he would reveal himself in an instant if Marcus were threatened. Doing business, it was in full force, an almost oppressive weight to it.

Beth had no idea how to explain his changes around her. Looking back, he’d nearly always been on guard with her, always wearing his strength and power on his shoulders, even when they were in bed together, even when he was being tender and caring.

But after she shot him, he had stopped. Instead, when they were alone, he relaxed. Maybe, she thought, it’s because I’ve already shot him. Maybe it’s because he saw her as an equal or as so little of a threat that he didn’t even need to bother. She wasn't sure which explanation was worse.

——————

Things were going well until Danny got food poisoning after going out with a friend’s family for dinner and spent the whole night sick, preventing her from doing a drop. The next day, she baked a small 6” lemon cake. Instead of taking it to the loft, she messaged Rio that she had something for him to pick up. He didn’t answer, which was practically his signature move, but when she came back from grocery shopping, the box with the cake was gone.

They didn’t see one another for a couple of weeks and when they did, it was unexpected. Beth was in serious need of an accountant and Johnny had come highly recommended. Kind of. It had taken her months to track down even his name. It wasn’t so much that he came highly recommended as it was that no one discussed him or knew anything about him.

She arrived at a legitimate looking office and was escorted down a brightly lit hallway by a well dressed young woman.

The conference room was made of glass, so she could see Rio, knew it was him even before he turned.

Whatever business Rio had with Johnny was apparently concluded, because one of Johnny’s guys - they had to be his, considering how they stood at his back - opened the door.

“You’d be Beth?” Johnny asked, standing and offering his hand to her.

“And you’d be Johnny,” Beth replied, shaking his hand.

“You two know each other?” Johnny looked between Beth and Rio.

She didn’t answer, but Rio did. “Yeah, she’s the one that shot me last year.”

Johnny’s eyes widened and the two men behind him started to reach into their jackets, but Rio raised a hand.

“Chill, man,” he said. “We worked that out.”

Beth’s lips thinned.

The bodyguards didn’t relax, but they lowered their hands. Beth could see Demon behind Rio, looking completely at ease. Johnny’s eyes kept flitting back and forth between the two of them.

“There’s no way that she shot you,” he said. “No fuckin’ way.”

Rio laughed, then turned his head over his shoulder. “She shoot me?” he asked Demon.

“Three times,” Demon replied.

Johnny didn’t stop looking at them like they’d grown extra heads. “Seriously?”

“Don’t piss her off,” Rio drawled in response on his way out. “She’ll go right for your heart.”

The meeting went well, but when she got to the parking lot, her van was gone and Rio’s car was parked in its place.

She got into the passenger’s side. “Really?” she hissed.

Rio gave her a look. “Relax, Demon’s taking it to your house. He’ll fill up the tank too.”

Beth pursed her lips, but didn’t press the matter any further. He’d just clam up.

Normally, when Rio dropped her off at her house, he would keep the car running as he waited to see that she got inside. But this time, he got out of the car with her, followed her up the walk and waited patiently as she unlocked the door. He didn’t say a thing and when she turned to look at him, he looked ill at ease.

She retreated to the bathroom to splash water on her face, her heart starting to beat faster and faster as she contemplated Rio’s reasons for driving her home. Had he even had business with Johnny or had he just been lying in wait for her for some unknown to all but Rio reason?

She opened the door and he was there, in her room.

Beth stopped in the doorway. “What are you doing here?”

Rio, his back to her as he studied the bookshelf, didn’t reply.

“Did tonight remind you of what I did or something?” Beth asked, moving towards him. “Remind you that you need to get even if you want to stay on top?”

She reached him as he started to turn around. He’d shed his jacket - she could see it hanging over the back of her chair. She didn’t know what to expect from him, she never knew what to expect from him, so she’d practically lost the ability to be surprised by him. Anything was possible.

But somehow, him lifting his hands to start unbuttoning his shirt had been beyond the realm of possible in Beth’s mind. Beth drew in a hasty breath.

He was moving carefully, keeping the halves of his shirt overlapping until all the buttons were undone. Maximum impact. That was Rio’s style. He shrugged off his shirt, revealing his bare chest to her.

The first thing that Beth noticed wasn’t the scars that she’d put there. Those were second. The first was a new bit of ink. The bird on his neck had always drawn her eye, but he’d added to it. Now, clutched in the bird’s talons was a flaming sun.

Her left hand came up to touch it, but she stopped, a hair’s breadth away from his skin. Was her touch welcome?

Rio answered by stepping closer, pressing his chest against her hand. Both of them made little sounds, loud in the empty room. Beth dragged her fingers around the circumference of the sun, coming to rest atop his heart. She brought her right hand up to touch the topmost scar.

“Why are you here, Rio?” Beth said.

Rio took her face in his hands and directed it upwards. With the low light from the bedside lamp the only illumination, his face was half in shadow. They’d been here before, standing in her bedroom and staring at each other, breathing one another in.

“Rio,” she whispered, but that was all she got out before he pressed his lips against hers.

It was a soft kiss, the kind that was made for early mornings when you were getting out of bed together, or for a quick hello when one of you came home from a day away. The kind of kiss that said “I’m here, you’re here”.

Beth shivered, her fingers curling into fists against Rio’s chest. He pulled back and pressed their foreheads together. She’d closed her eyes during the kiss and she opened them again so that she could see whatever emotion was on his face. Maybe it would be sadness, maybe this was a final goodbye.

Instead, he said her name, “Elizabeth,” and sighed, his body relaxing all at once. She hadn’t even noticed how much tension he’d been holding until it disappeared. He dropped his hands from her face to hang at his sides.

She slowly led him towards the bed and lay down, welcoming him into her arms. He was a warm weight against her front as he settled his head against her chest with a contented sound. Beth started to stroke up and down the length of his spine, occasionally detouring to brush over the exit wounds.

“Why?” she asked after they’d lain there for a while.

“I don’t know,” Rio admitted.

And wasn’t that the truth.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to medievalraven and neveroffanon for beta-ing this fic and to anyone reading! The title is from Ellie Goulding's Figure 8.
> 
> As of now, this is technically canon compliant, though that will likely change once season three comes. There's a couple of fics that I have written that I want to get up before season three comes along and tells me I'm wrong about everything. I actually finished this back in June, just...never posted it. As always, if there is content that you think should be warned for, please let me know.


End file.
